The Social Media Strategy Small Businesses Can Win With

0:00Today we helped a latte for Sam coffee shop get an insurance quote simply and easily and made sure a floral delivery van was able to make someone's day. We're the Hartford with decades of experience insuring millions of unique small businesses. When it comes to your small business insurance. Thank you. One size absolutely does not fit all. Get a quote or find an agent today at the Hartford dot com slash small business. Small brands have one TikTok that goes viral that outsells in product what a Fortune 500 competitor there is spends millions of dollars in television investment. If you were a small entrepreneur, you couldn't get into Walmart.

0:42You couldn't get into Sephora and Ulta. You couldn't get into CVS or Wegmans. You also didn't have enough money to run television spots. That's all been flipped because attention has shifted to the mobile device and to social networks, and distribution has shifted to Amazon 3PLs, to Shopify opportunities. You know, you don't need to win at Walmart to build a big business. This is the Gary Vee Audio Experience. What has been the most important strategy for you in shifting your approach and growing online communities and your brand from 15 years ago to today? To really win with the consumer, you have to have a level of relationship with it, with them, with the collective, that is grounded in an astonishing level of humility and non-transactional DNA.

1:35I would argue that most people struggle in business and marketing because they are overly emotional about how they make their money today. Overly emotional about how they make their money today. Why do you say that? When I'm in those meetings with those CMOs, when I talk about TikTok live shopping or I talk about influencer marketing, TikTok live shopping, if you talk to a retailer who's got 400 leases around the country and all their cogs are caught up and in stores and fixtures and employees, me pontificating that in a studio like this, you can sell just as much stuff as your store in Midtown.

2:18right now with all those costs, you struggle to go there because we've made the financial commitment there and we're going to be judged every 90 days because we're a big company, either publicly or in a PE environment. And so you start to say no, not because you're not intellectually strong enough to know that it's happening. It's just that you're emotionally and actually tied up into how you're making your economics now. When I talk about influencers six, seven, 10 years ago are coming. Well, if you just paid Tiger Woods$20 million a year to wear your watch, the concept of like, hey, these kids online can do more for you for hundreds of thousands of dollars doesn't sit well.

3:01You're locked into a three-year$60 million deal. So if you ask me why things have worked for me or what has been the go-to, it's never fight the market. If the truth is that consumers are now enjoying social or influencers or live shopping, or here's a good one that's going to really bother everyone, AI influencers. If it hurts your feelings as a human, you're against the concept of AI humans on the internet, people that are not real, that are computer generated. If that's your ideology, you're allowed. But if the consumer is consuming that content and doesn't care if it's a real-life human or an AI-generated human that's communicating to them about a bottle of water or a dress or a blouse or a hat, you're going to lose that game.

3:53The customer is undefeated. I was not going to ask you this till the end, but your book is dedicated, quote, to the 1 % that make consumer-centric decisions versus the 99 % that make decisions based on boardroom politics, which seems to tie in to what you were just saying. You really believe that most entrepreneurs are making decisions based on boardroom politics and that 90-day cycle that you just referenced. No, I don't believe most entrepreneurs are. Entrepreneurs have no choice. They have to be consumer-centric or they're out of business pretty quickly. I believe most executives are. Interesting.

4:28So that's your message to corporate America. Yeah. And by the way, I don't say it from a place of audacity or disdain. I actually come from a heavy place of empathy. You know, if you're making$613 ,000 a year in stock options in a big corporation and you have, you have, you know, you know, your mortgage to pay and your life is run by your income to go into a boardroom and throw a bomb in there and say, we're doing everything wrong. That's politically vulnerable. So I understand how people and why people do what they do. But my point has always been, while I've been in Madison Avenue the last 15 years with all these CEOs, CMOs, board members, CFOs, is I understand why you do it, but it doesn't mean that it's right.

5:19And there's a reason that there's so much decline, especially you look at the CPG space. They used to have substantial moats. If you were a small entrepreneur, you couldn't get into Walmart. You couldn't get into Sephora and Ulta. You couldn't get into CVS or Wegmans. You also didn't have enough money to run television spots. That's all been flipped with Shopify and Amazon and with the retailers needing younger consumers. So now they're taking their shopper marketing dollars from big companies and they're giving it to little companies to come into their stores. Small brands have one TikTok that goes viral that outsells in product what a Fortune 500 competitor there is spends millions of dollars in television investment.

6:06We have a very big day of reckoning going on right now because attention has shifted to the mobile device and to social networks and distribution has shifted to Amazon 3PLs, to Shopify opportunities. You know, you don't need to win at Walmart to build a big business. You need to win at Walmart and Target to get to that next tier. But you can get to$100 million in revenue today without ever stepping yourself into Arkansas or Minnesota. That is unprecedented in the history of consumer packaged goods. And that's just the CBG space. This goes on and on and on. And so look what Melanie did with Canva to Adobe.

6:50She couldn't have done that 30 years ago without the Internet being where it is now. She wouldn't have had the money to go to the trade shows in Las Vegas and buy a booth for$100 ,000 to court corporate clients. It's changed. When you talk about attention, you called your book Day Trading Attention. And obviously it's a whole book, so you don't want to give away the whole book. It's okay. You can. But what is the thesis? What does it mean to day trade attention? From a marketing lens, this will probably land with anyone who's from marketing or knows a little bit about it. We used to spend months and months and months to plan our campaign.

7:31You know, the way, you know, again, if you ever watched Mad Men or if you know somebody in the industry or if you're in it, you get a brief. You work on it for months to think from strategy. Then creative tries to crack the idea. Then you got to sell it to the client. Then they say yes. Then it has to go to a production shoot. Then that takes time. Then finally then, nine months later, this is happening today. There are brands who will spend millions of dollars to take nine months to make a 30-second television commercial. Do you know how insane that is? I'm trying not to laugh because I know a lot of people make money that way, but the world is moving faster than that.

8:12I mean, hundreds of thousands, millions, and then hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars. And then they have to spend millions of dollars to amplify that 30 second commercial. My thesis, my argument is that is dinosaur behavior. On the record, I wish it still existed. Very few humans were built to dominate the 1960s, 70s, Madison Avenue landscape more than me. I would have crushed. I would have been in Midtown with a cocktail. I would have been charming, gift of gab. I would have had good ideas. I would have cared. It would have gone great. It would have gone great. We would have built a huge firm.

8:57It just doesn't exist. I wish it did. What we do at VaynerMedia, what day trading attention is about, is harder. than coming up with a slogan and making a 30-second video. But the argument is it's moving that fast, that today, as we sit here right now, every Fortune 5000 company should have already posted three, six, 11 pictures or videos across the seven social networks and watch the organic AI-driven algorithms reach the audience based on the creative value and then analyze the quant and qual data of that success or failure to make another decision to put out another piece of content later today.

9:47Three, six, or seven pictures? I believe that they're... Per social, so that's three on Instagram? No, I would say overall. I'm trying to be empathetic here. The number's going to be far greater. With AI coming, these numbers are going to be... I'm going to watch these. I'm going to make fun of myself about that quote in 24 months. And by the way, Gary Vee, my personal brand, this morning has already put out 12 to 15 pieces of content. Across all the social media platforms. For everybody who's listening, from LinkedIn to Facebook to Snapchat Spotlight to TikTok to X Twitter to YouTube Shorts, every one of these platforms now is very similar.

10:25Facebook proper, Facebook proper, not Instagram. One could argue is the most important platform right this second because of how much attention is actually on it and how many people have forgotten about it because they've moved on to TikTok and Instagram. So you have the best marketers, at least the contemporary young ones or even old ones that get it, putting all their energy on TikTok and Instagram. Meanwhile, back to day trading, Facebook's sitting here with an ungodly amount of attention, especially if you're targeting 45 to 80 year olds. Oh, by the way, they have plenty of money. And brands are not posting in there organically.

11:05The other thing that's crazy is in ad land, you always used to make something knowing you were going to spend media dollars to amplify it, to hide if it was bad. I've been saying lately, for 70 years, working media dollars, the money you would pay the Forbes to put a full page in the magazine 20 years ago, a billboard outside, a radio station, a television, working media dollars, the media dollars, not the creative. that was in for 70 years those were used to hide bad creative now when you put out all your advertising on the organic algorithms when something does remarkable that's when you should put media dollars behind it because you've gotten validation that people think it's good so now i believe the job of working media dollars is to amplify good creative we've gone from it Good money, big money, hiding bad creative to now big money, amplifying good creative.

12:02The Fortune 5000 brands that most attack that first will win. So that's what you mean when in day trading attention you say use data to inform content creation and optimize ad spending. So basically see what goes viral. I would argue or over index, right? Viral is like a whole different animal in itself. if you and I started a T brand and our first 50 posts got 80 views because we're new and our 81st post got 8 ,000 views we need to take note of that. For me 8 ,000 views is a devastating moment for a brand that's just starting with 50 views 8 ,000 is a great win. I was there too. We're all starting at zero.

12:46So over indexing but if you have virality yes you should bet the farm on it. You mentioned a few minutes ago the number of social media platforms and how you should be on all of them. I personally am losing track, and I lose the energy to keep up on Threads and Blue Sky and Instagram, and I've ignored Facebook. I'm not on TikTok. That's Maggie personally, like Maggie and my personal life. And Maggie's allowed. Maggie, the person, is allowed. But for entrepreneurs and for yourself, how do you keep track and stay on top of all the new platforms emerging? Because one of your other pieces of advice is prioritize early adoption of new platforms and features, which that in and of itself is a job to say nothing of building a business.

13:29By knowing I have no choice. No matter who you are in this room, you need to tell a story to compel somebody to do something with you. What is the lack of the bridge that has clicked in your mind to make you understand the following, which is this is my fundamental truth. This entire room should be making 30 to 50 pieces of content on the internet every single day. 99 % of this room hasn't made 30 to 50 pieces of content this year. But what's interesting is the word that really resonated to me in the back was compassion and empathy, which is to say, I've been thinking a lot over the last three months.

14:10Actually, how many people here by show of hands follow my content somewhat? Thank you. So some of you may know that over the last 100 days or so, I've been speaking a little bit more subtly, I don't know how hardcore you go, about delivery style versus what is being said. And I think all of us as we evolve, and I'm sure for the people here, as you've evolved through your business, you ebb and flow and you get more thoughtful. Experience matters. It's crazy to me how much of a business gangster I thought I was at 22 years old. And look, I walked into my dad's single store liquor store and took it from a three to a$60 million business as a 22 year old to 28 years old.

14:49So I had it. But to stand here this morning in front of you, it's crazy to me how much experience matters. I thought I was great and I'm still that same person. I have those raw talents. But I have the great fortune of 20 years of experience and the great fortune of listening to the community and the comments and the feedback. And I've been thinking a lot about what the style in which I communicate, is it clouding what I'm actually saying? Because I sit every day, I wake up every morning, and I think about this room, and I say, how do they not understand? How do they not understand that if they post five to 30 things today on Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter and YouTube, and get anchor and start a podcast while they walk down here with a coffee and post it and now they have a podcast.

15:47Like what is happening that the 98 % that follow me closely daily consume the podcast. Here, I mean, for the people that just raised their hand, one of the biggest reasons I'm trying to do so much Q &A now is I'm saying the same shit. I'm not gonna change this message. It's, you know, the reality is, thank God for me, because I enjoy this so much, thank God for me that TikTok comes along. Thank God for me that LinkedIn, after a decade of being a recruiting tool, evolves into a content tool. Had the world not been in a place where constantly, the place where we spend our attention moves, I would have been irrelevant five years ago.

16:33Because what I believe, after you have the ability to recognize if it's podcast or Facebook or not Facebook, anymore, MySpace or YouTube or direct mail or email or billboards or my ability to day trade attention, I see it down here, maybe it was up before, my ability to actually know right this second, this second, Saturday, October, now, not this year, not this era, today, this second, where the underpriced attention is, whether organic, which means every single person here, even if they don't have a LinkedIn account, can go home after this talk, create one, and post something about their local town, what it's been like for her to be an entrepreneur, a product or service, which I don't recommend because too many people try to sell up front instead of bring value.

17:21The fact that you can do that with no followers, no contacts, post today on LinkedIn, and get 1 ,000 people to read that is remarkable. It's just remarkable. The fact that you can buy Instagram swipe-up ads in stories within a five mile radius of your office in the region that you sell at$2 and$3 for every thousand people that see you is ludicrous. Hey everybody, I hope you're enjoying the podcast right now. Make sure you follow the podcast. That's why I'm interrupting. Let's keep going on this show but follow the podcast. It'll make my mom super happy. So I guess this morning instead of my normal like I'm gonna Tasmanian devil this room until somebody just starts to fucking do this, you know?

18:12I'm kind of going with a different point of view of like, what do we need to do here today? Like, it's what has led me to places like insecurity and keeping up with the Joneses and judgment and parenting because all these things have come to me in the last three years because I can't put the pieces together that if you've consumed what I've had to say on the ridiculous, thank God, success that it's brought me and any other company that does it. My friends, the number one advertiser on Google AdWords from 2001 to 2008 was Amazon. Amazon became the biggest company in our country because it understood underpriced attention and it didn't buy billboard, I mean it bought a lot of things because it was a big company but they spent crazy money on Google AdWords when Google AdWords was the best arbitrage.

19:01I took a liquor store that was doing$3 million a year on$300 ,000 gross profit before our expenses with no credit line and no VC and in six, seven years built it to a$60 million business because email and Google AdWords were the right move. If you spent 30 hours, which I think you should if this is your business, on deeply becoming educated how to properly run Facebook ads, not what so many in here have done, which is they've done one little thing with Facebook ads, their niece did it, or some outsourced social media expert did it, or they tried to do it and it didn't work and they decided Facebook ads don't work.

19:44You know what else doesn't work? A basketball. If you suck at basketball.

19:54Let me make this very simple, this is not unfair or audacious, this is the truth. If you've run Facebook ads and they didn't work, you suck, not Facebook. This is happening. This is happening. And so here's where I'm at. In a world where you want to convince me that I'm better off to go with you than to go to a dot com that is doing a way better job than you marketing, we've got some work to do. Like, let's get to the elephant in the room. If you're gonna get out-marketed by Rocket and Zebra and Shmebra and Bebra, you're gonna lose. I don't give a shit if you make a shirt that says brokers are better.

20:30I'm being serious. That's not a razz. That's not a razz. That's compassion to we need to be consumer-centric. Humans don't care. That's not what customers do. Customers didn't care that the local bookstore had been there for 44 years. They wanted to pay eight bucks less and have the book delivered to their home. Customer doesn't care. You have to understand that. I don't care that you've been doing this for 18 years and have a great relationship. If you get out-communicated, over time you will lose. This is a very simple game. The internet will suffocate everything but the persons and organizations that communicate best and have the best product, right?

21:13But the best product is subjective. You don't know that it's the best product until after the fact. On the communication part, you know that Karen showed up in my LinkedIn and I'm in the market for a mortgage and I happen to like what she said in that video. My friends, there's nothing more important right now period in our society than to be an unbelievable communicator in a contemporary manner. It is reshaping our societal norms, our politics, our retail, everything. How, how can you sit at home and talk to your closest friends and relatives about how this and social media has changed politics, has ruined our children, has done all this stuff and not feel that it can impact your business.

22:02That is the compassion I walk in with this morning. What has been the lack, what is the lack of the bridge that has clicked in your mind to make you understand the following, which is this is my fundamental truth. This entire room should be making 30 to 50 pieces of content on the internet every single day. 99 % of this room hasn't made 30 to 50 pieces of content this year. that delta scares the crap out of me and I want to continue to articulate in this keynote why and how let's go into the how I think one of the biggest things that's running through my mind is how do I convince this room that yesterday yesterday not tomorrow they need to either start a video show or a podcast that they can then record and then after it's done for an hour do what I do, which is post-produce it and chop it up into little pieces, which then gets them into a place of being able to make 17 or 20 pieces of content out of a one-hour day.

23:08Now, what do you make your podcast? As you guys can imagine, no normal human being thinks mortgage life is rad. We can agree with that. It's not the litty-est thing in society. but what I do believe is the following. I do believe that every one of you has the ability to start a podcast that is a small business or community show based on where you live. The St. Louis Business Podcast is a real podcast that anybody here could start and let me break this down to you why I want to encourage so many of you to start a podcast. I call it the high school party rule. I want to take you back to high school.

23:57Now think about sophomore, junior, senior year and think very carefully about that one kid who wasn't the most popular kid in school but had the great fortune that his parents weren't around on weekends. That kid, as a mid-level popular kid, had the great idea of being the person that threw the party so the popular kids could come and hook up and drink. That kid's popularity exploded over the next year or two. The person that hosts the party has the leverage. If you start the St. Louis business podcast show and then you spend five hours DMing, emailing, and reaching out to all the other business owners in St.

24:44Louis and inviting them to be on your podcast named the St. Louis Business Podcast, you, by just taking the initiative, have flipped the leverage and now will have much bigger business owners than you interested on being on your podcast. Through that, you will build general awareness in your region and you will build reputation as a top of the funnel lead gen to what you actually do. The show is about the entrepreneurial or local dynamics. The awareness you get from it will allow them to figure out what you do for a living which will lead to biz dev. I believe what I just said is as important as knowing how to balance your checkbook.

25:31Watch what I do, not what I say. When I came back and seven years, what are we in 19, so you know this. My career has a really funny moment in it which is when I went double down on Vayner. September 2011 to like 13, 14, I was pretty quiet for me on the internet. There's very little, like there's only, if you look at it, there's only like the keynotes, there's like a couple things. Like I was very quiet. And then when I came back, I was more self-aware and what did I start? The Ask Gary Vee Show. I mean, I, sometimes when I talk to Caleb or anybody on my team, like, you know, I'm the breakout personality in the business space in this last couple years, while actively being a CEO and CEO of a massive company.

26:19And when I talk to them, I'm like, could you imagine if I was just Gary Vee? Like every morning I would do a fucking morning show from like 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. just Q &A and would like take, you think I'm penetrating all the channels now? It'd be over. I would do it every day. It's my favorite thing to do. Tea with Gary Vee. You know, like nice glass of tea, Just put them on, call me, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, clip, clip, clip, distribute, distribute. Every day. Look how pumped we get when we do, one of the reasons I did 4Ds was for the fucking, what did I just say, the firing, like it's fucking good.

26:56I can't wait for that piece of content. Oh, the default knowing or guessing, no, like that fucking thing's gonna kill on LinkedIn. That's two million in the bank. But I need to be asked. It's hard to like self-start. Like it's not, I apologize. I'm really great at self-starting, that's why it was good. It's just I'm only gonna say the same things that I believe in. The only time I do new shit is when I'm asked. That's why I started, and if you know that about yourself, make it a Q &A show. Right? Yeah, which is so much fun. So fun, especially when you stay in your, the biggest thing I'll tell you is just stay in your lane.

27:31I think a lot of people when they start Q &A have a sense of like I'm an expert and I should have an answer for this. It happened yesterday, I don't know, right? What was that? I was pumped. I don't know, nonetheless, I was super pumped to tell them I'm like, I don't know. I love that. I attended a Q &A with my photography. Yep. And no questions. I didn't have enough engagement yet, so there's a certain time that you wanna start and launch a Q &A. I'll give you a good one though. If like nobody knows, for people out there who wanna start a Q &A show that nobody knows in the world, let's say you want to, go to Twitter, search terms find questions that people are actually asking the ethos and answer them.

28:11By the way that is the actual origin story of Gary Vee. Nobody in the world knew who I was when I started Wine Library TV. I went on Twitter, searched wine terms and answered questions. Because I knew what I was talking about about wine nobody knew that I knew.

28:30So you can literally you should go watch an old Ask Gary Vee. I clip, make the image from the question on Twitter, but you could do that with somebody not asking you the question. John in Albuquerque asked, not me, but the world, so I'll answer it. What should I do when my, you know? What else? How much time do I have? Officially 10. 10 more minutes? We do five and then a picture. Okay. Anything else? This is nothing, just my brand. Good, of course. So I just read Titan, no. You were asked in a book, Mentors? Oh, what? No, Tribe of Mentors. Ferris or Godin? Ferris. I think it was Titans, right?